Volume XXXV: Epitaph for a Realm

By the mid 3060s, the Free Worlds League’s troubles seemed all but lost to the haze of history. The Marik Civil War was but a memory. Thomas Marik, rightful heir to the realm (or so everyone thought) sat upon his throne on Atreus, secure in the rejuvenated power of the Captain-Generalcy, while a growing splinter faction of ComStar, the Word of Blake, lobbied to make him their Primus in Exile. The alliance with Sun-Tzu Liao, once a crutch to ward off FedCom ambitions, no longer seemed important as the mighty Steiner-Davion alliance had collapsed, and the ever-present threat of the Clans, even with the end of the Invasion, had kept the realms of the Inner Sphere dependent on the League’s arms trade. Even the chronic threat of internal strife had become a waning memory, at least on the surface, as all lauded the Captain-General, who—with his vaunted Knights of the Inner Sphere—seemed wholly devoted to the causes of peace across the Inner Sphere and honor when battle was joined.

The casual outside observer even had to envy the League for its remarkable stability in the turbulence of the 3060s. As these years saw the closing shots of the Clan wars, the First Dominion/Combine War, the St. Ives/Capellan conflict, the FedCom Civil War, and all its attendant side-wars, the League saw no major political or military threats in this time. Yet within the very heart of this realm, a time bomb of politics, fanaticism, hatred, and desperation was ticking. Even though some evidence remains today that the Blakists probably did not plan the start of the Jihad as such, they continued to maneuver in secret even among themselves, dark and sinister elements aligning for a moment that should have brought untold glory under the new Star League.

Unfortunately for the Word, their prophesied ascent ended abruptly when the assembled leaders of the Inner Sphere—minus Sun-Tzu Liao, the Capellan Chancellor who’d already declared his intent to withdraw—admitted the new Star League was a sham. Rather than prevent wars, their alliance had actually facilitated some, and with many member realms too battered by waves of recent fighting to fulfill their obligations to the new SLDF, the organization simply served no more useful purpose. Thus did the leaders abandon their attempted revival of the vaunted Star League.

Every Inner Sphere schoolchild knows the rest, of course. . . .

The first strike, they say, was Outreach, but only by a few hours, and then only because the Word truly believed the [Wolf’s] Dragoons to be a threat after years of fighting in the [Chaos] March. Before 28 November was out, however, the skies over New Avalon, Tharkad, and Luthien were ablaze with the heat plumes of inbound DropShips covered by a torrent of orbit-to-surface fire from WarShips, which materialized as if from nowhere. Lots of people liken the Jihad to the Amaris Crisis or the First Succession War, because the Blakists showed no hesitation in using nuclear weapons, biochemical agents, or even compromising vital life-support systems on marginal worlds. However, there is one fundamental difference of note: Unlike the Usurper’s troops or the armies of the Great Houses, the goal of the Word was never conquest, but terror and destruction. Outreach was sterilized, not held. Avalon City was pummeled to the point where it simply became a ghost town battlefield. Tharkad was poisoned by a cloud of radiation from its failed reactor. The Word’s troops lingered in few of these areas, and then only to tie up forces and sow more chaos. Atreus may have taken it worse, though, for those who dealt out their destruction were the very troops once regarded as the cream of the Free Worlds League military. Coupled with the Blakist agents who bombed Parliament and the Captain-General’s command center—killing most of the Knights of the Inner Sphere—with a lethal nerve agent, over half of the League’s navy was on hand to bombard their own capital into dust. The assault came fresh on the heels of the public revelation that “Thomas Marik” was an impostor, placed on the throne by ComStar during the troubled times of the Andurien crisis. Ironically, the attackers’ most important target, the false Thomas Marik himself, was spared from the assault, having taken shelter even as the Parliament Ministers continued to debate (among other things) the repeal of Resolution 288. The sacking of Atreus was only the beginning. . . . —Shaunna Verizi, Fractured States: Politics and the (Former) Free Worlds League, Republic Press, 3099

Word of Blake agents infiltrated all levels of the Free Worlds League, having been permitted to do so by a decade and a half of misplaced trust. They subverted countless League military units and WarShips, adding them to the Blakists’ impressive arsenal. Thomas Marik—or rather, the man who all believed to be Thomas Marik—was so appalled by these actions that he attempted to turn on the Blakists, only to bring the wrath of the Jihad upon his own realm. When the zealots and their allies assaulted Atreus in 3068, the attack was their most decisive yet, for it did more than wipe out the governmental heart of the League, along with its most sterling example of a noble military (in the form of the First Knights of the Inner Sphere). It also immediately shattered all faith in House Marik.

What followed next was, to many minds, inevitable. Bereft of solid leadership and disillusioned by the treachery in their own midst, the various substates of the League turned inward, each frantically seeking its own security against the Jihad. The six largest of these centered on the worlds of Regulus, Marik, Oriente, Andurien, Tamarind, and Lesnovo, and while most would eventually proclaim their rebirth as independent states under historic boundaries, they would all eventually grow to encompass smaller worlds and alliances, creating the six nations still present today. Against the Word, they stood together, but no longer as well unified as before. Indeed, Thomas Marik (Thomas Halas, after 3080) would be forced into a kind of self-imposed exile on Oriente after the war’s end, where he would remain under the care of his wife, Sherryl Halas. Through the remainder of the Jihad, his actions would be limited to intelligence support for the splintering League and for Devlin Stone’s coalition against the Word, all his political clout and accomplishments as a false Captain-General lost.

Meanwhile, the Word of Blake’s predations assured that these separate provinces had more to worry about than coordinating against the Blakist threat. Blakist troops, disguised as Marik forces, assaulted the Lyran Alliance’s Skye region, prompting a reprisal that kept the Stewart Commonwealth and Duchy of Tamarind occupied. At the same time, every effort was made to replicate the effect for Oriente and Andurien on the Capellan border. The communications grid—seriously disabled across the shattered League—left most of the fractured leadership completely in the dark. Though the remaining loyal forces, including the Second Knights (whose last stand during the doomed first counterassault on Atreus is legendary), fought valiantly on every front, the Blakists simply had every advantage in the war.

Victory would finally be purchased for most of the League by warriors of Stone’s coalition and their own people’s willingness to resort to the same level of barbarity as their attackers. Gibson, for instance, once the heart of the Word, was “sanitized” as a world in 3078 by a massed nuclear bombardment launched by free Regulan forces. This action, one of the most brutal of the war, effectively shattered the Word in the Free Worlds League, but also hammered the last nail in the nation’s coffin. With the immediate crisis past, Parliament destroyed, and all faith in the imposter lost, the League’s provinces went their separate ways. Though they would retain some diplomatic ties, mostly to coordinate mutual defense against their less fractured neighbors, they would also compete for the unclaimed worlds and smaller alliances scattered throughout the former League territories.

And so fell the solidarity of House Marik and the unity it once brought to the Free Worlds League. Over the years that followed, miniature wars, against each other and their neighbors—Lyran, Capellan, Periphery, and Republic—would characterize this turbulent region of space where once a mighty economic and political power had stood. Six large powers and around four-score unclaimed worlds now are all that remain, each eking out its own existence day to day.

And yet, within these lost people there is still hope, for not all believe that the Free Worlds League will remain dead. To some, it is only a matter of time before the eagle becomes the phoenix, rising again from its own ashes.

Up next, follow me as we tour the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth and the Regulan Fiefs, two successors of the once-great Free Worlds League. I’m Bertram Habeas.